Modern sugar mill, plantation Rosario at Aguacate, Cuba

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Few pictures in the early-1900s Cuba set capture the scale of industrial sugar as directly as this view of the mill at Rosario plantation near Aguacate. Sugar was the engine of the island's economy in these years, and large central mills like this one, with their tall chimneys and sprawling machinery sheds, replaced older small-scale operations and drew heavily on American capital after the Spanish-American War. The photograph was issued by the Detroit Photographic Company, which produced a wide run of views for travelers and armchair readers in the decade after 1900, and its copyright registration preserves the image's date. Look closely at the buildings and rail lines for a sense of how the plantation was laid out around its processing works.

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